Letters to the Editor

Whitman as 2002 speaker

That Princeton would ask Meg Whitman to speak while sponsoring a new residential college is hardly surprising. The decision that our class's baccalaureate is the proper venue for her to do so confuses me. I had thought our baccalaureate speaker might be chosen for some notable service to the world. Without impugning Whitman's achievements at all, I must wonder whether those achievements have anything to do with her selection as speaker.

I'm sure Whitman can speak, and that she'll be politic and deferential, inspirational and memorable, and maybe patriotic. I'm sure, too, that she might have been chosen to speak in another year, without any donation. I do not believe that she is unqualified, but I do doubt whether her qualifications were what counted.

Do we really imagine that Whitman's selection this year was made without any consideration of her generosity? There are coincidences and sure, the same spirit that made her give the gift may be the spirit that makes her a wonderful person, and we should not be surprised if a prominent Princetonian pops up in different headlines — but at the very least the appearance of impropriety attaches to a donation and an invitation so soon one after the other. It looks like the Class of 2002 is comping out its baccalaureate speech to a wealthy patron.

The situation doesn't look any better in light of the University's official statement. In response to an email, a class officer quickly pointed out to me how the press release noted that Whitman had been chosen to speak before her gift was made known. In fact, the carefully worded release says Whitman had been suggested by students before her gift was made known. This is different than being selected; when suggestions were requested from our entire class, we presumably thought of more than one speaker. And in any case, the order of the honors is irrelevant. A quid pro quo is a quid pro quo, whoever initiates it. Whether the invitation was intended to encourage her to give to Princeton or her enormous donation obliged our class to invite her to speak is not the question. The question is whether Meg Whitman was invited to speak because of her donation rather than her resume.

Of course, one could maintain that selling the chance to speak is a reasonable exchange. I have no answer for this objection. Princeton's got to get paid, and all it has to sell is tradition, a sense of community and pulpit time. Princeton's best evidence for great alumni relations is a high contribution rate, and our annual Reunions seem to facilitate the solicitation of donations. Nostalgia seems worthwhile to many alums and I've got no serious argument with a man or woman who wants to pay for it, or for notoriety on their old stomping grounds. If the administration announced tomorrow that Princeton was changing its name to Whitman University for a suitable price, I'd shrug and go graduate. But Princeton should be honest about its transactions. If our baccalaureate is intended to honor Meg Whitman the philanthropist and not the Class of 2002, it should not be called a baccalaureate and our class should play no special role. None of us will be underclassmen in her residential college and probably very few of us will follow her example and pledge thirty million at a go, unless the alcohol at Reunions gets even more persuasive. Peter Robinson '02

Ethnic studies

Instead of all the different programs and certificates in African-American, Jewish, Women's, and Latin American Studies (with more to come in the future perhaps) why not create a single Department of Ethnic, Regional and Gender Studies? It seems to me that these different programs have as much of a common disciplinary core as do the multitude of courses offered by, for example, the History Department. C. Thomas Corwin '62